For Immediate Release
April 06, 1998
Holocaust Survivor Describes Being Thrown Into Street By Generali Officials After The War
First Videotaped Deposition Given
Today, Adolf Stern became the first Holocaust survivor to testify in a pending lawsuit in the ongoing investigation of insurance fraud against Holocaust victims and their heirs. A Czechoslovakian survivor of Auschwitz, Stern described in his videotaped deposition being thrown into the street by insurance officials after attempting to collect on his family’s life and annuity policies after WW II.
“When I asked to be paid, they [Assicurazioni Generali officials] made a joke of me,” Stern recalled during the deposition. “They mocked me. They were arrogant. They stated I would have to produce a death certificate and copies of the relevant insurance policies before they would process the claims. Then they forcibly removed me from the office.”
For one hour and 45 minutes, the 82 year-old Stern testified in a Miami hotel about a half a century of injustice suffered at the hands of Generali of Trieste, Italy, the company responsible for writing 80% of all policies taken out by Jews prior to the war. In February, Stern and his family filed a $135 million lawsuit in California against Generali for wrongfully denying life insurance benefits owed to them (L.A. Superior Court, BC185376).
During his deposition, Stern recalled his father, Mor Stern, as a wealthy wine and spirits producer who purchased several life, annuity and dowry policies prior to the war to protect his large family. Stern said his father paid a “fortune in premiums” to Generali beginning in 1929. In 1939, Adolf said he personally went to Generali’s Brun office in Czechoslovakia to pre-pay life insurance and annuity premiums through 1944.
Most of the Stern family would not survive the war. Adolf’s wife and infant son were killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz as were his mother, father, and two brothers. Adolf survived along with two brothers and a sister. Once liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp, Adolf made his way to the Generali office in Prague one month after the war’s end in 1945 to claim his family’s insurance proceeds. But Generali rejected his claims.
“They told me I needed to produce a death certificate,” Stern said. “I told them Hitler didn’t give out death certificates.
Stern recounted other efforts the family has made over the ensuing five decades to recover benefits owed to them, including repeated petitions to Generali to search their files for a record of the family policies. Thanks to some good luck, the Sterns have obtained copies of two 1929 policies Mor had purchased, policies that Generali has insisted for years never existed. With accrued interest, the 1929 policies have a face value of $4.5 million, the Sterns believe.
Present at the deposition hearing were Adolf Stern’s attorneys, the nationally recognized insurance consumer rights veteran William M. Shernoff of the Claremont, California law firm of Shernoff, Bidart, Darras & Arkin, and co-counsel Lisa Stern of Los Angeles, who is married to Mor Stern’s grandson, Alan Stern. Also present was attorney Ricardo Echeverria of Shernoff, Bidart, Darras & Arkin.
Representing Generali were Jeffrey Tidus of Coudert Brothers-Los Angeles; Doug Broder of Coudert Brothers-New York; and A. John Mancini of Christy & Viener-New York.
